


All I Have, All I Want

by midnightflame



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Birthday, Established Relationship, Flirting, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, M/M, Marriage, Memories, Mild Language, Post-Canon Fix-It, Sentimental, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 02:08:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17992823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: It's Shiro birthday, and Keith spends the morning drawing him into some of his favorite memories.When Shiro bites his bottom lip, Keith knows he’s recalling each moment that led them to that dorm room. Freshly showered thanks to the desert’s dry heat, the dust from the road, with Shiro’s hand around his waist, his head dipped against Keith's. Taking in the scent of cedar and juniper like a man who hadn’t stepped outside in decades. Keith swore he could taste sunlight on Shiro’s skin as they fell through the dorm’s doorway. Shiro told him he was everything he could ever want in this life from that moment on.Because they had been to the stars. And they had fought for all existence. They had become universal heroes, the bridge between intergalactic beings and ideologies. Nothing had felt out of their reach, or so that’s how the world played it.But the only thing they want, at the end of it all, is each other.My first dream nearly destroyed me. And in saving me, Keith, you gave me another.





	All I Have, All I Want

**Author's Note:**

  * For [propinquitous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/propinquitous/gifts).



> Hello there! This is my Shiro Birthday Exchange fic for propinquitous! The request had involved Sheith and little things that recall fond memories/sentimentality, which was such a great request for these boys, and something Shiro definitely deserves! <3

He likes it here. 

Not to say he hasn’t liked other places, but this is the one they get to call home. A real home. That brick-and-mortar, ‘send your Christmas cards here because this is where I’ll deck my mantle with them’ sort of home. And it’s not that he hates traveling the universe either. That has its own charms, along with its own demands, and it fulfills him in ways that he knows only Shiro could completely understand. 

Sometimes, he needed to be out there just to find a little more of what he loved about being down here. 

Earth. 

It had taken them months to decide on a place, but eventually, they settled for one of the reconstructed cities a little less than an hour away from the Atlas’ home base. There had been talk of a number of other cities, other planets even, but they had both decided that retiring was not on their agenda for the time being. What they had wanted was a place far enough away to feel like they weren’t locked into the military life of the Garrison yet close enough to make a difference when they were needed. Close enough that they could still be relied upon reliably. 

What Shiro had needed was a place they could make their own. 

Keith had recognized that fact when they had been on leave six months after the official end of the war. Yes, there was still plenty that needed to be done, as all too often comes to light when the extent of the destruction was made known and emotions continued to run high. But after everything they had been through, for years running, the executive decision was made to grant the Paladins and Atlas crew a few weeks of leave. To take care of themselves. 

It was the Garrison’s way of telling them to sort through their own shit before the real work started again. And they all had things they needed to go through. 

The building had been nothing more than a shell of its former warehouse glory back then. It’s facade completely crumpled in, the ashy-gray dust of concrete settled over its insides. Keith remembers thinking it too early for the bones of something so large to be forgotten like that. But it wasn’t until they were sitting down at a make-shift cafe (more outdoors than indoors as far as seating went, but the kitchen had remained enclosed and functional), that he overheard the talk. That idle chatter that occupied mouths - things like the weather, the superficial glosses over home life, and the turn of events around town. 

Namely the shift that had taken place in Las Cruces. What had once been considered the storage district of the city had transformed into its cultural hub. Many of the new residents - both Earth-side and those from galaxies afar - were eager to rebuild, to create something from the ruin, something better. _Everlasting_. 

And that’s when Keith had seen it - the way Shiro had smiled like maybe he believed in everlasting things too. 

The good things. 

“You look refreshed.”

Just out of the shower, Keith is still in the process of towel-drying his hair when he walks into the kitchen. It’s part of an open floor plan (Shiro’s one request and something Keith felt was entirely needed for the man), with a long island acting not only as a place to cook but also as their breakfast bar and the piece that divides up their main living space into its two halves. On the opposite end, their bedroom sits nestled behind a pair of large sliding doors, styled from a memory in Shiro’s past. They’re the quietest things Keith has ever encountered, quieter even than the Atlas’ doors with their ghost-whisper _whooshes_. Spanning over the door panels is a forest of cedar trees, from which a pair of cranes, one red and one black, their wings tipped in gold, ascend.

Rubbing vigorously at the back of his head, Keith props himself up against the end of the island and smiles over at Shiro. “You’re the one who let me sleep in.”

Shiro shrugs then pours a cup of coffee. Even from here, he can smell the faint traces of vanilla and cinnamon, additions made after far too many trips to that makeshift cafe. It’s been rebuilt now and exists only three blocks from their building. But Keith remembers that as well - the way Shiro had paused after that first cup, blinking uncomprehendingly down at the dark liquid then back at their waitress who had simply smiled. 

_It’s not the big things that remind heroes of home._

For the remaining twelve days of their “vacation” time, Shiro had gone back every morning for a cup of coffee. Insistently. Keith knows something in those words she had spoken had dislodged something else inside of the man. Nothing large. No stone before the tomb, but rather, like a thorn from a paw, complete with the promise of healing. 

Months later, when the topic of a place to call their own had finally come up between them, Las Cruces had been on the list. It never left. 

“I would’ve showered with you though,” Shiro says with a lift of his eyebrows. The smile he gives hides behind his coffee cup, but Keith can see it as clearly as he can the suggestion in Shiro’s eyes. 

“Who’s to say that won’t come up later?” Keith retorts. He leans over the width of the kitchen island and drags his own cup towards him.

Shiro continues to conceal his smile, his mug tipped against the edge of his lips. His gaze refuses to leave Keith’s, as steady and bright as a well-fed winter’s fire. There’s a lot that he tries to hide - or had tried to - even as Shiro knows Keith will continue to see through the perfectly crafted veneer. Slick, solid, always reflecting more of the world gazing upon him than what lays beneath. That’s the Shiro the world knows. The best of everything he believes himself to be. But in these moments between the two of them, it’s like Shiro unpacks all the broken pieces of his humanity and scatters them across their loft for Keith to find at the most unlikely of moments. 

They’re some of the most beautiful moments Keith has ever lived through, however. 

But, Shiro has always been that to him: a man worthy of love. The real trick of it has been convincing him that he was worth it as well. 

“Well, that does sound promising.”

Keith can only laugh at the amusement lightening up Shiro’s voice. It’s like sunshine on those cloudless sunny days, when you’re sitting in the shade of some ancient oak, the light raining down all around you. No matter where he looks, Keith can see the good in his life. He drapes the towel over a bar stool and flicks a glance over at Shiro, full of mischief. When he picks up his mug, he does so with the quirk of an eyebrow, an easy slide around the counter to put himself within Shiro’s reach.

And he’s not disappointed. 

Then again, he never truly is with Shiro.

One hand settles against his hip, warmth seeping through the thin material of his T-shirt. Keith slides into the space provided as Shiro opens his body up to him. He tips his head and brushes his lips against the underside of Shiro’s chin. In return, Shiro dips his head down, nestles into his neck, and breathes in deeply.

And that’s when he stills. Completely and utterly still. Keith starts to smile. 

“This is. . .” Shiro murmurs, his words carrying a gentle heat across Keith’s skin.

Keith hums in reply, kissing Shiro against his temple. “It is.”

“Fuck. . .” Shiro sucks in a breath. “. . .you smell good.”

They stand there like that, Shiro’s arm slinking around his waist, pulling Keith in closer, bit by bit, both of them drowning in the scent of the other. Because to him, Shiro smells like the deep of the woods, a little musky, like shadow-painted moss and the crispness of fall air. A place for only them, far from the demands of the world. 

Just them.

“You wore this the first time. . .” 

Shiro trails off after that, but Keith remembers it well. The body wash had carried the faint traces of cedarwood and juniper, one of his first purchases back on Earth when he realized he no longer had anything. Not even the basics. And he had time on his hands, for as little as it would eventually amount to be, to try and reclaim some sort of normalcy in his life. They’d spent the better part of an hour in some shack-turned-convenience store, picking through the latest stock flown in and disseminated among the vendors of the area. The Garrison would have supplied them with whatever he had wanted, Keith had known that, but he had also needed to get away.

Out.

Anywhere. 

Over the last few years, he had found so many things thought lost to him, and somehow, having shampoo and body wash, regulated and regimented, handed to him as part of the script was the one thing that had set him off searching again. When he thinks about it now, Keith realizes it had nothing to do with the standard issue items of Garrison life affronting his grooming habits; it had been the way Shiro had stared down at them, like he had been handed a lifeless heart, his smile resignation-lined. 

All for a box, neatly packed with the basic necessities, and somehow devoid of the most important ones. 

An hour later, they were both in one of the Garrison’s vehicles, the base well behind them and nothing but sand-flooded land surrounding them.

Some say the desert is a lonely place. Keith used to think that too, but he wore that loneliness the same way the desert wore its heat - as a way to keep most things out. Only the survival-hardened existed within his world. But as Shiro drove them down the various roads carrying them away from the Garrison, most spotted with refugee camps and the remnants of what life had once been, Keith felt the freedom he had always associated with the desert sinking back in to reclaim his bones.

But what struck him most about the moment was the way Shiro sat in the driver’s seat, his shoulders lowered, one hand on the steering wheel, the other laced with Keith’s, his face turned toward the open road. And when their eyes had met, Keith knew that Shiro had been freedom-born too. 

By the time they made it back to their Garrison-issued room -

“How did it take us so long to get there?” Shiro laughs. He still has his face tucked against Keith’s neck, and the sound of his voice practically reverberates off Keith’s skin. It sends a shiver right down his spine. 

“You ask, knowing damn well why,” Keith replies, looping his arms around Shiro’s neck. The coffee had been abandoned seconds earlier, designated needless in the face of Shiro’s attention. What better way to bring himself back into the world than by handing himself over to the man he loved? 

Shiro laughs again, brushes his lips against skin, then plants a kiss firmly over the line of Keith’s jugular. “What was it you said to me then?”

Keith rolls his eyes, much to Shiro’s delight. But amused or not, it doesn’t stop Shiro from squeezing his ass in retribution. “Took you long enough to get me into your bed, old timer. . .” 

“It wasn’t even my bed.”

“It was _a_ bed.”

“Should we have felt bad about that?”

“You say that like you’re the first person to ever fuck in one of the Garrison’s dorm rooms. . .”

Shiro pulls his head back, mouth entertaining a faux pout. “I wasn’t?”

Another eye roll, another pinch to ass cheek. Keith leans in and nips at Shiro’s lips, effectively demolishing the pout that had tried to play his emotions. What he gets in return is Shiro’s mouth against his own, the slow press of their bodies coming together like warmth slipping into spring and bringing them both to life. Lips part. Somewhere between their tongues moving against one another and the slide of Shiro’s hand beneath his shirt, Keith moans. 

“They should have given us one of the flats instead,” Shiro says, breathless.

This time, it’s Keith snorting a laugh. He dips his head, trying to bury the sound against Shiro’s neck. “They did. But you couldn’t wait for the paperwork to process. . .”

“Me?” 

The incredulous, strait-laced, rule-abiding sort of _me_. And it’s the most blatant lie Keith has ever heard.

“You,” he answers firmly, grinding his hips against Shiro’s. 

When Shiro bites his bottom lip, Keith knows he’s recalling each moment that led them to that dorm room. Freshly showered thanks to the desert’s dry heat, the dust from the road, with Shiro’s hand around his waist, his head dipped against Keith's. Taking in the scent of cedar and juniper like a man who hadn’t stepped outside in decades. Keith swore he could taste sunlight on Shiro’s skin as they fell through the dorm’s doorway. Shiro told him he was everything he could ever want in this life from that moment on.

Because they had been to the stars. And they had fought for all existence. They had become universal heroes, the bridge between intergalactic beings and ideologies. Nothing had felt out of their reach, or so that’s how the world played it. 

But the only thing they want, at the end of it all, is each other. 

_My first dream nearly destroyed me. And in saving me, Keith, you gave me another._

Shiro laughs, soft and beautiful in that way that always makes Keith’s heart flutter. With a step to the left, he corners Keith against the island. Hands drift beneath his T-shirt, fingers idle in their movements over skin.

“That night,” he starts quietly as his gaze finds Keith’s, “I felt like we finally had a chance, Keith. . .”

He’s looking for something. Keith knows this as their eyes remain locked on one another. For what, he doesn’t know, but he can see it there, this needed but nameless thing trying to find the right place to connect with him. The corner of Shiro’s mouth hooks on a would-be smile, a bit haphazard, like it might fall to the floor at any moment. 

Without losing eye contact, Keith leans in and presses his lips gently to Shiro’s. 

Shiro exhales, closes his eyes, and gives himself over to that kiss. “I had loved you for so long, Keith. And that day. . .you made me feel like I had a chance.” 

A shake of his head. Shiro kisses him again with all the quiet ache of a heart trying to express itself. 

“That’s the first night you told me you did,” Keith murmurs.

Just recalling the look on Shiro’s face as he had said that, poised above him on that godawful twin mattress that had felt like floating on forever, is enough to make his own heart hurt again from the enormity of its love. And for a moment, Keith wonders if that sort of pain, gentle but resilient, is the cost of taking your heart out and handing it to another. To stuff it so full with all that you have to give, and then cut it free for someone else, all in the hope that they might cherish it as much as you once did.

“. . .and you’ve told me every day since, Shiro.”

Perhaps that is what Shiro had been looking for. He draws back, lips still parted, and stares at Keith as if seeing him again for the first time that morning. 

“I love you, Takashi Shirogane.”

The first part of Shiro’s reply comes as a nod. Just this small dip of his head that can’t hide the thick swallow he makes along with it. His fingers tighten over Keith’s hips, a brief spasm of a grip that eases a moment later. He takes a breath, draws closer. The tip of his nose brushes against Keith’s, and the words he next speaks wash against his lips as warm, as wanting as summer reaching for spring through winter’s veil. 

“You are my heart,” Shiro murmurs, his eyes closed, forehead pressed to Keith’s. “You are the reason I believe that love doesn’t have to fail us. . .”

Something in Keith’s chest coils tight, then tighter still. He doesn’t know if he can breathe, too afraid to try in case it breaks this moment apart into a million fragmented pieces, too small to ever make whole again. His lips quiver. Shiro calms them with a kiss.

“As many times as it takes.”

That’s the moment it all falls apart. Keith opens his mouth, grateful for the silence that breaks loose, though in his chest, he feels it. The sob that could have been, sprung loose from that strange bulky thing hiding in his chest. “You remember. . .” 

Shiro nods again. “I couldn’t forget. Not after everything. . .” 

“That was years ago.”

“So was that time in the dorm room.”

Keith snorts. “I really question your idea of romance some days.”

“What? I thought making grilled cheese the morning after was pretty romantic myself.”

“Yeah. . .I guess it was. Considering that was one of five things you could cook without burning it.”

When Shiro laughs, Keith feels as though he had just been gifted something beyond measure by the gods. Shiro’s right hand abandons his hip, moving up to brush a thumb lightly against the curve of his jaw instead.

“You know that’s why I wanted the kitchen here, right?”

The kitchen. Modern. Foolproof. An absolute luxury. It was Shiro’s final frontier, the last bit of space he had been determined to conquer.

Keith smiles against Shiro’s lips. “And here I was thinking it was so I could stop the next culinary apocalypse from the living room.”

A low rumble emanates from Shiro’s chest. Not quite laughter, but something that wishes to be it, would be it if not for the faint embarrassment that comes from hearing such a statement about himself. Even so, Shiro kisses him again, quick as conciliation can sometimes be, bereft of ego as love always makes it. 

They do say forgiveness comes in all forms. 

“I know, Shiro,” Keith says. He slides his hands up, fingers gliding into the hair at the back of Shiro’s neck. It’s longer now, not quite in line with a standard military crew-cut, but not carrying a length he could grab easily either. But it’s soft, and still a sinless sort of white that makes Keith think Shiro is the most perfect thing on this planet. Even if he isn’t entirely angelic. . . “We’ve spent a lot of time in here.”

Learning, as Shiro had called it, but Keith always imagined it more as relearning. Figuring out the bits and pieces of themselves the universe and all her trials had irrevocably changed, wondering if there was enough left to them from before Voltron to still claim themselves as their own. It had been taking the time to find out all the ways in which they were good for each other, those things that had been exposed in battle and were never given the time to fully understand _why_ they were. Even if those very things had been heart-felt all the same. Those months had been them, putting together a house, learning how they fit together and finally giving it a name. 

Home.

“My cooking’s improved,” Shiro says after a moment, his arms wrapped around Keith’s body once more. 

“True. It’s not a complete disaster.”

“Complete seems a little heavy-handed.”

“You know I only ate some of those things you made out of love.”

Shiro pulls his head back and blows out a scoffing huff. “You never ate a damn thing you disliked of mine. And you never failed to tell me why exactly we were ordering out or walking down to one of the food stalls. . .”

“I liked walking out with you,” Keith replies. 

And that seems to give Shiro pause. His smile returns, softer than before, all adoration before a heart enthroned. “I liked walking around down there with you too. Every week, it was like the neighborhood found another piece of itself.”

“And now it’s whole.”

Shiro bobs his head. For a long moment after, they simply stand there in silence, Keith nestling his head against Shiro’s neck while the man he loves, beyond all universal doubt, pulls him close, then closer still. 

He remembers the first time Shiro took his hand, fingers interlacing one after the other, as they moved through the streets. It was a week after they had signed the lease, officially making them tenants of the newly refurbished warehouse. In the months since their last visit, the storage district had been transformed into a blossoming residential area. Well, that had been the plan-in-progress. At the time of their move-in, storefronts were still being erected, buildings converted, and most of the shopping took place along the streets in makeshift stalls that reminded Keith more of the planets they had visited than the Earth he had once known. 

They’d barely had any furniture in their loft then, only the college basics of a kitchen (a true travesty, Hunk had lamented) and their mattresses acting as both couch and bed. But Shiro had been. . .God, he’d been beautiful, Keith recalls. Standing there in all that space, with those windows that overlooked the mountains climbing out of the horizon, the same ones that framed the star-splattered sky every night. Shiro had loved the open space. Keith had loved the way Shiro opened up when he was there. 

Like he was a man with a lifetime unfurling before him and not a deadline owed to Death. 

“It’s snowing. . .”

The words come out quiet against his temple, hardly a disturbance. But Keith turns his head all the same and finds that there is, in fact, snow drifting down around their building. 

“Do you remember?” Shiro asks.

When Keith looks at him, he sees it all then - the precise moment that Shiro is losing himself to. He says nothing in response, not at first, but simply studies the way Shiro smiles as if he had found paradise in him. And maybe that’s the truth of it all. No longer anything to hide, nothing more to fight. No more worrying about how it all ends, but realizing there is more to these passing seconds than Time would ever let you think. 

What were minutes to Time anyway? No more than pebbles in a riverbed. 

But to be able to stand here with the other half of your soul. . .

Keith feels the corner of his mouth start to move. 

“Do you?” Shiro asks again, this time lifting Keith’s hand to his mouth. “It was snowing then too. . .”

And again, he says nothing. But he watches as lips glance against the gold wrapped around his finger, feels how they press firmer for the second kiss set against his ring. 

His breath stills, his heart like a hummingbird in slow motion, beating in his chest. The sound no more than a dull echo in his ears. 

Keith remembers the cold crunch of the snow beneath their feet, the white fog of Shiro’s breath coming in rapid puffs, betraying his nerves. The warmth of Shiro’s hand had chased the chill from his own. 

_"I wanted you to say yes so desperately. . .”_

_“I said yes, Shiro.”_

He knows that Shiro is looking at him now just as he had at that moment, with the promise of everlasting love in the palm of his hand, written indelibly onto his soul. It had been the moment Shiro had condensed down the universe into one small square space of a broken city block, cordoned off for repairs all around them, and told him that the life he wanted was everything that was standing before him right then and there.

“I do,” he finally murmurs. 

“Always and forever,” Shiro replies. He brushes his lips against Keith’s knuckles, then glances up at him. “I do, Keith.”

Something stings at the corner of his eyes. He dips his head, pushes himself into Shiro’s space, and presses their mouths together. 

“Happy birthday, Takashi.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! You can also find me over on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ByMidnightFlame)!


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